RENSSELAERVILLE — The Carey Institute for Global Good has its feet on the ground and its head in the clouds.

The lofty goals its name suggests are about to take new form with residencies for journalists, artists, and musicians. At the same time, it continues to offer practical help for its rural community with a brewery program that is aiding farmers to grow crops and brewers to manufacture beer.

The center, which has been evolving for more than a century, is now on firmer financial ground in its latest incarnation.

The organization has tried to carry the torch of its predecessor, the Rensselaerville Institute, ever since the land was purchased by William P. Carey, a trustee of the institute for 20 years.

Carey, the founder of W. P. Carey & Co., a real estate financing firm, died in 2012 just before the sale was announced, and until recently his estate held his Rensselaerville assets.

His estate, which owned the 100-acre campus, just finalized its donation to the institute.

The donation, along with a small endowment, means the co-executors of the Carey estate and his nearly dozen heirs felt the institute had begun to fulfill Carey’s vision, said Carol Ash, the institute’s president. Most of his heirs live in New York City, she said, and will no longer need to be responsible for the campus in the Helderbergs.

The donation of the land will also allow the institute to raise more money as it embarks on two new residency programs — in journalism and arts — and as it occupies a new position as a model farm brewery and incubator for the craft-beer industry. With the endowment and ownership of the property, the institute will be able to match donors, Ash said.

“The biggest thing is, when you go out to raise money, people want to know that you have a bank account and people want to know that they are not the only support for you and that your life and death isn’t dependent on them. They want a partner.”

Ash said the added events held by the institute fill a void left during the winter when the “bread-and-butter business” of summertime conferences and weddings slows. The conference business and the upkeep of the extensive property was declared the cause of the Rensselaerville Institute putting it up for sale.

Speaking on Sept. 12 to a packed living room in one of the institute’s historic homes, Ash compared the institute’s new direction to Yaddo, a well-known artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs — she pointed out Monday that the new residency’s focus on long-form non fiction wouldn’t overlap with retreat. She told the crowd she would resign from her position when a new executive director is hired and would instead work fulltime as chairwoman of the organization’s board.

She called for donations, saying the institute would not survive with its Carey endowment alone.

“Knowing that the place was up for sale, and we did not know what would happen to it, and it being a major piece of our community, that’s what sort of catapulted me and Josh into it to begin with,” said Ash of her husband, Josh Friedman.

Ash had retired as commissioner of the Office of Parks and Recreation in 2010 and helped to found the Alliance for New York State Parks before she took the job of directing the institute came along, which she said was inspired by her love of Rensselaerville, where she lives.

Throughout its history, the Rensselaerville Institute, first organized in the 1960s, hosted discussions by luminary thinkers, among them novelist Isaac Asimov and United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, and worked on practical projects, like helping struggling schools and poor towns in need of infrastructure.

The institute traces its history back to the “Country Forums on Human Relations,” which brought students and social leaders to Rensselaerville following World War I.

Carey’s wish was to see that heritage of dialogues for global understanding continue, but also to support the local community.

The Helderberg Brewshed, as the brewery on the campus is called, is the institute’s effort to reach out locally. Along with the brewery, where brewers will be able to experiment with ingredients, the institute holds “Farm-to-Glass workshops” on crops that can be grown locally and a technical assistance program for farmers to explore growing small grains.

Rebecca Platel, now the institute’s director of local partnerships and planning, was a program specialist at the campus when she was tracking a state bill that created a farm brewery license that emphasized New York State ingredients.

Platel grew up in the hamlet of Rensselaerville. The idea of a brewery as an economic tool was born when she met with others in Rensselaerville, who were concerned a cherished local restaurant, the Palmer House Cafe, was going to close.

“They are such a unique connection of people and supply chains, and communities, and all these academics, and industry folks, and farmers, and politicians all staring at the same issue,” Platel, who studied urban planning at Hunter College, said of farm breweries.

Upstate New York was once a center for growing hops, and brewing beer.

The institute is trying to rebuild the knowledge and infrastructure for small grains, the varied steps of supplying brewers. Two issues of focus are crop insurance, for which there is little data available for growing barley in New York, and equipment, like grain driers and hop harvesters, that could be used cooperatively.